Tag: e-cat

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Greek Media: Rossi and Defkalion back together

Greek television Channel 6 is reporting that Andrea Rossi and Defkalion Green Technologies have patched things up, and Defkalion is proceeding with its plans to establish a power plant in Xanthi, Greece:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjN-xl69V44]

The news clip contains an interview with Defkalion CEO Alexandros Xanthoulis. A full translation of the interview in English does not appear to be available yet, but commenter Peter Roe has provided the following translation (with the help of Google translate) of the news story text on the web page in a comment on the Pure Energy Systems Network:

The process of establishing a power plant in Xanthi that uses hydrogen-nickel fusion continues, as the problems that seemed to exist between the inventor and the company undertaking the building of this plant have been overcome, and everything will now continue as originally planned.

Clouds have been seen in recent days in relations between the inventor of the device producing energy from hydrogen-nickel fusion, Andrea Rossi, and Defkalion Green Technologies, the company which is planning to install the relevant equipment for the power plant in Xanthi. Andrea Rossi, in his recent statement, talked about suspending cooperation with the Greek company Defkalion, and of turning to a big company in the U.S. instead. But as in all dramas, the crisis in relations between the inventor and the company has been overcome, and arrangements are now progressing normally.

Channel 6 contacted the the CEO of Defkalion, Mr Ksanthoulis, who makes it clear that Mr. Rossi has every right to cooperate with the US company since their agreement does not prohibit it. However, what is important is that any problems are overcome and the investment proceeds as originally planned.

In closing Mr. Xanthoulis attributed all this disruption to the pressures on both Defkalion and on Mr Rossi, who according to Mr. Xanthoulis, was more vulnerable to such pressure.

Thanks, Peter! And thanks also to PESN commenter PGreen, who apparently found the news report.

If true, this is certainly good news for Defkalion. The phrase “everything will now continue as originally planned” would seem to indicate that the October demonstration will take place in Xanthi, but in a recent response to a question regarding the demonstration on his website, Rossi gave no indication of any change in his recent decision to hold the demonstration in the United States. The statement in the news story may mean nothing more than that Rossi will allow Defkalion to use his E-Cat technology in their Hyperion units, as originally planned. However, Rossi has not as yet confirmed the report.

UPDATE:

Andrea Rossi has made a statement on the matter which fortunately needs no translation:

Dear Sterling Allan:
It is totally false that EFA srl has cured the agreement with Defkalion. There is nothing at all to add to the press release already published the last week (August 6th 2011).
This answer is valid also for many other Readers who have asked us the same thing.
Andrea Rossi

Another mystery. A miscommunication, a mistranslation, or something more intentional? Whatever the case may be, I have a feeling Mr. Xanthoulis isn’t done speaking to the press, even if he wishes he were.

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Rossi-Defkalion SPLIT

The Pure Energy Systems site has been all over this, providing updates and back and forth responses from this huge shake up between Andrea Rossi and Defkalion Green Technologies Inc. who Rossi had licensing agreements with for the Energy Catalyzer, but now it appears everything is suddenly OFF between the two.

Scroll down on the link above to the Rossi-Defkalion Controversy to see parts 1-4, and likely more to be added, on this ongoing, unfolding set back for the E-Cat.

In brief, as of now, reading Rossi’s response and Defkalion’s response:

-Rossi claims betrayal. Financial issues, denies personal issues. His attorneys have filed a suit. Claims Defkalion has never even built a working reactor of their own.

-Defkalion claims this is all due to “international pressures”, still believes in Rossi and seems to expect this to be remedied. (“Any project with such dire and earthmoving implications is bound to face difficulties – this was expected and has been, to-date, faced bravely and carefully by Defkalion Green Technologies.”) – Defkalion response excerpt.

-Meanwhile, Rossi says things will still move forward, and focus now is on, and in, the USA.  “I confirm that our 1 MW plant will be put in operation in the USA, after an agreement we made last week with one of the most important entities of the USA; “ – excerpt Rossi response.

And so it goes…

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Krivit’s third report: E-Cat not demonstrated to work as claimed

Steven Krivit, editor of New Energy Times, has released his third report on Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat, and the report is every bit as long as he had claimed. The report is largely critical of the claims made for the energy catalyzer, and of the way Andrea Rossi, Sergio Focardi, and Giuseppe Levi have attempted to establish those claims. Although most of the criticisms have been made elsewhere, Krivit has helpfully (for those critical of Rossi’s claims, at least) provided a clearinghouse for them.

Krivit’s report includes 37 appendices, but the essence of his criticism is contained in his main report:

The first concern is a question of the quantity of the steam. That is, how much steam has been visually observed coming out of the experiments? How does this amount and rate compare with the predicted amount and rate of steam from a 5 kilowatt power source?

The second concern is the method the Rossi group used to measure (or fail to measure) the output of the experiment. How did the group perform the measurement of the heat outflow, or steam, in the experiments?

The third concern is the quality of the steam. A higher-quality (or drier) steam output contains far more heat than a lower-quality (or wetter) steam. How did the Rossi group measure (or fail to measure) the quality of the steam coming out of the experiments?

None of these concerns is likely to be resolved before the demonstration in the last week of October (according to Rossi’s current timeline), and it is questionable if Rossi’s demonstration will directly answer those concerns, or if it will leave them for buyers of E-Cat technology to answer to their satisfaction. In an answer to a question by Prof. Brian Josephson concerning that matter on his website, Rossi emphasized that many important scientists and journalists would attend the test, and insisted that the E-Cat is producing perfectly dry steam in recent tests, but did not answer Prof. Josephson’s point about measuring the water and/or steam output of the reactor.

There seems to be a general agreement among both optimists and skeptics of a technical bent that this is an important weakness of Rossi’s demonstrations so far. One section of Krivit’s report concerns a presentation Francesco Celani delivered at the 16th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (ICCF-16) in Chennai, India, in February of this year. A diagram in this presentation pointed out the importance, when testing a black box (i.e. a device the internals of which are unknown), of measuring all inputs and outputs. In Rossi’s demonstrations, on the other hand, he measured the inputs (water and electrical power) and presumed to measure the temperature inside the black box itself (unnecessary when one is attempting to demonstrate simply that the black box functions), but failed to measure the output (steam and/or water).

The arguments supporting Krivit’s claim that the E-Cat achieves an energy gain of only one or two times input power are contained in the appendices to the main report. Krivit does not deny the possibility of achieving excess heat from nickel-hydrogen reactions and emphasizes that he has covered the field on various occasions before. His criticism here is of Andrea Rossi and his collaborators. He does not directly accuse Rossi of devising a hoax or a scam, but he mentions several ways (private investment, purchase of franchises from Defkalion) in which money has presumably already changed hands, and therefore a scam is possible, whether or not it is probable.  Regarding the charge, made more or less openly by both Andrea Rossi and Daniele Passerini (link is in Italian), that Krivit is in cahoots with Francesco Piantelli, Krivit does not address it directly, but says in his report: “I have not seen Piantelli for a few years, but I have been in touch with him recently to confirm the history of his research.”

Perhaps most interesting, because it’s news, is the last section of Krivit’s report, which confirms Rossi’s meeting with members of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and identifies Michael A. Nelson as the man who arranged the meeting. According to Nelson, as reported by Krivit, Rossi made no demonstration and no agreement had yet been made between Rossi and NASA, but NASA is interested in testing Rossi’s device as long as the government doesn’t have to foot the bill. Nelson is eager to find out the truth about Rossi’s device, whatever it may be. These words from him are worth quoting here:

Rossi has brought a lot of attention to the field. Any researchers who have a legitimate claim are going to benefit from this.

Whatever else he may be, it appears Andrea Rossi is a catalyst of sorts.

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Related posts:

Mr. Rossi talks E-Cat. — Ruby Carat June 21, 2011

Mr. Rossi calculates the E-Cat’s energy — Ivy Matt June 24, 2011

Krivit’s second report: Rossi evades scientific debate — Ivy Matt June 28, 2011

Coming soon: Krivit’s third report — Ivy Matt July 29, 2011

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Coming soon: Krivit’s third report

After a month of reticence, New Energy Times editor Steven Krivit has broken his silence to announce that his long-awaited third report on Rossi’s E-Cat is coming soon—”within the next few days”. This report is supposed to cover the technical details supporting his reasoning that the E-Cat—the one Rossi demonstrated for him, at any rate—does not produce as much energy as Rossi claims it does. Rossi calculated an energy gain factor of 6 for that particular demonstration. In a recent post on New Energy Times, Krivit estimated that the energy gain was at most one or two times, and that possibly there was no excess energy at all.

The primary reason Krivit gives for the delay is that he received numerous comments—more than 50—on his videos and reports, some from people of apparently great technical knowledge. Consequently, he decided to incorporate some of these comments in his report. After releasing his third report, Krivit will release the videos of his interviews with Andrea Rossi, Sergio Focardi, Giuseppe Levi, University of Bologna physicist David Bianchini (who has performed various measurements on the E-Cat), and blogger Daniele Passerini (who has covered the E-Cat story since the beginning). Lastly, Krivit will write a final report giving some of his reflections and observations on the story, and then he will move on to other things—”until and unless [Rossi] and/or his associates make an appropriate scientific communication or deliver a publicly available energy device for sale.”

So far Rossi and his E-Cat have been the big news in cold fusion this year; otherwise cold fusion enthusiasts would probably be spending their time discussing Brian Ahern’s replication of Arata (not so much of Rossi, as some have reported—Rossi’s device is not really replicable by independent researchers until more is revealed about the details of its functioning). It looks like Krivit’s third report will add new detail, but not much new information to the E-Cat debate, so whether Andrea Rossi ends up being seen as the savior of cold fusion or a pariah even among the small community of cold fusion researchers probably depends mostly on the outcome of his megawatt thermal reactor demonstration three (not four) months away, and the subsequent sales of the devices by Defkalion GT and AmpEnergo.

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Related posts:

Mr. Rossi talks E-Cat. — Ruby Carat June 21, 2011

Mr. Rossi calculates the E-Cat’s energy — Ivy Matt June 24, 2011

Krivit’s second report: Rossi evades scientific debate — Ivy Matt June 28, 2011

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Viareggio Cold Fusion conference: science, politics, and an Italian competitor

A conference titled “Has cold fusion become a reality?” was held at 4:00 PM July 23 at Villa Borbone in Viareggio, Italy. The conference was hosted by Italian solar energy company Delta Energie. Among the participants were Andrea Rossi via Skype; his research partner, retired University of Bologna physicist Sergio Focardi, via a pre-recorded presentation; Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare physicist and cold fusion researcher Francesco Celani; astrophysicist and futurologist Mario Menichella; renewable energy researcher and author Roy Virgilio; and author and blogger Daniele Passerini, who is also a long-time friend of University of Bologna physicist Giuseppe Levi.

Fusione Fredda by Roy Virgillio Roy Virgilio is the author of a small Italian paperback book on cold fusion and an acquaintance of Francesco Piantelli, an early researcher in nickel-hydrogen reactions. Daniele Passerini has provided a summary of events on his blog and promises a video of the conference will appear online in a few days. Giorgio at Talk Polywell has provided an English translation of the more important news from the conference:

16.13 – Rossi is contacted on Skype, he confirms delivery of the 1MW plant according schedule. The first industrial plant will be delivered “patent pending”, hoping that this will push the European patent application.
Domestic reactors will have to wait a couple of years due to certifications.

16.57 – Focardi in his pre-recorded interview states again that he does not know the Nuclear process that brings an atom of nikel to capture a proton and transform it into Copper, but the chemical analysis prove that this is what happens.

17.03 – The temperature when the reaction starts is 60-70° C.

17.05 – Focardi states that many samples of reactors has been tested, including closed circuit reactors.

17.56 – Celani states that he is researching on nanoparticles deposited on thin and long strings of Pd, in Deuterium atmosphere.
He states he is getting 400/W/g at 500°C with good reproducibility.
He has worked also with Ni strings in Hydrogen atmosphere and he is getting an efficiency of 1800W/g at 900°C, but with difficulties in reproducibility.

18.26 – Roy Virgilio takes the word. He states that Piantelli research is going good. A new company (NickEnergia) has been formed 5 month ago and is already licensing his know how to other industries to produce reactors of different sizes. [The name of the company appears to be Nichenergy. —Ivy Matt]

18.35 – Piantelli is not willing to to make any type of publicity. He will arrive on the market with a commercial product and let the market decide if the technology is real or not.

18.37 – Piantelli is not using catalizers, just Nickel and Hydrogen.

18.39 – The first reactors that will be offered for sale will be on the range of the Kw. After they will scale up.

Another interesting tidbit from the conference.

19.10 – Among the public Milly Moratti takes the word and states that there are clearly now experimental evidences of Cold Fusion.

Now, for the one who do not know, Milli Moratti is the wife of Massimo Moratti, one of the richest man in Italy and owner of the Saras Petrol Refinery, The biggest in Italy and one of the biggest in Europe.
That’s a 5,3 Billion Euro Company.
She has money and the political knowledge.

Thanks, Giorgio!

That’s good news about the research and political interest, disappointing news about the timeline for the arrival of the domestic reactor.

Several other items of interest were brought up at the conference: Celani’s allegation that the public denigration of cold fusion research and the hiring of the best cold fusion researchers by US military and government labs likely stem from the same policy, the military interest in cold fusion research being the production of tritium for use in thermonuclear warheads; his naming of Japanese researcher Yoshiaki Arata as the “real father of cold fusion”, having studied deuterium in the gas phase (loaded into a metallic lattice or powder, presumably) since 1958; and Virgilio’s comment on Piantelli’s insistence that what occurs in the nickely-hydrogen reaction is not properly cold fusion, but rather some other type of low-energy nuclear reaction consisting of a complex sequence of events.

It seems clear now—if it wasn’t before—that the “Italian competitor” Andrea Rossi has mentioned several times on his website is Francesco Piantelli, with whom Sergio Focardi worked for many years. In his recent dust-up with physicist Julian Brown, Rossi said Brown had claimed that his competitor had a patent on the matter granted in 1995. Piantelli applied for a patent, “Energy Generation and Generator by Means of Anharmonic Stimulated Fusion”, in 1995, but the patent was never granted. However, whether the patent was granted or not, it could still be used as evidence for prior art in a claim against Rossi’s 2008 patent, which is probably the idea Brown was trying to convey to Rossi.

Earlier reports had claimed that Piantelli’s group had achieved 40 kW of thermal power and 7 kW of electrical power, but the recent report from Virgilio seems to point to a more modest claim. If the Piantelli device produces under 5 kW of thermal power, Nichenergy’s best option would seem to be to compete with Defkalion GT on price—and possibly time to market, if Nichenergy’s reactor is not also hampered by regulations on domestic use.

NOTE: this post has been updated to reflect what is apparently the actual name of Piantelli’s company, Nichenergy, based on updated information on Daniele Passerini’s blog.

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Mr. Rossi visits Sweden

Andrea Rossi has recently visited universities at the modern Swedish capital of Stockholm and the ancient Swedish capital of Uppsala. The purpose of the visit was ostensibly to hammer out research agreements with Stockholm University and Uppsala University similar to that reached with the University of Bologna.

However, the visit also gave Mr. Rossi the chance to swap ideas with scientists from around the world. As he reported on his Journal of Nuclear Physics website:

“In Sweden I am working with top scientists from Sweden, USA and Japan from whom I am learning. A lot.” –Andrea A. Rossi

From his recent comments on the site it appears Mr. Rossi is still refining his ideas on the theory behind the functioning of the E-Cat. He mentioned one cold fusion theory as particular interesting: Professor Yeong E. Kim‘s Bose-Einstein condensation theory of nuclear fusion. Professor Kim recently released a paper examining the application of his theory to hydrogen-nickel systems such as Rossi’s and recommending avenues of further research. He will be delivering a talk on the subject at the Fifth Asia Pacific Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics 2011 (APFB2011), August 22-26 in Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Also on his site, Mr. Rossi recently gave his opinion on the effect his E-Cat technology will have on other energy technologies (in particular hot fusion):

“I think that all the energy sources must be integrated and developed. They must be a team, not a mess.” –Andrea A. Rossi

And in answer to the following questions:

“How many years of study it took to get the first working prototype of E-Cat? What was your first thought when you realized it was working? What could be the more beautiful consequence of your invention for mankind?”

Mr. Rossi gave these answers:

1- About 15 years
2- That I was going into an ocean of troubles and an enormous amount of work. I was right.
3- Energy at very low price: better quality of life; maybe less wars, more time for Culture.
Warm Regards,
A.R.

Many of us are looking forward to seeing the fruits of that work.

Related posts:

“Eppur s’accende…”: Professors Levi and Ferrari on Italian radio — Ivy Matt June 29, 2011

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